In Her Shadow Page 8

  He was huge in his sou’wester, rubber leggings and boots, dripping wet, his hair stuck to his head and his skin pale with cold. Knotted up with the rubber and seawater smell of him was a sweaty man-smell. He was tall by then, more than six feet, and although not well-built, he had stature. His face was turning into a man’s face. It was strong, with a slightly crooked nose, dark eyes, and his hair had evolved from the ginger of its youth to a deeper red-brown. He was smiling, holding his hat in his hands. He hadn’t noticed me.

  I looked at Ellen’s face, then I looked at Jago and realized that what she was seeing was not Jago the uncouth boy from Trethene, but Jago, a good-looking young man. Something new was in her eyes too. I didn’t recognize it at the time but it made me uneasy. It was only looking back that I realized this was the first time Ellen had seen the possibility of Jago. She was reconsidering him.

  Jago held up a hand in recognition and took a step towards us, but Gemma Mills, the café owner, scuttled out from behind the counter flapping a tea-towel at him.

  ‘You keep off my nice clean floor with those wet boots, Jago Cardell!’ she scolded, and Jago laughed and scratched behind his ear and blushed a little, and everyone in the café looked at him and admired him. I remembered how he used to be; how he was defensive and nervous and how he hid behind bravado and bad language, and I felt proud of the boy-man who could stand in the café and charm everyone without doing anything at all.

  Ellen’s hand reached out to mine and squeezed it. She was staring at Jago, smiling up at him through her long, dark fringe, smiling with her blue eyes, looking at him as if he was something desirable; something she wanted. I felt cross with her out of all proportion to what she was doing.

  Gemma was all apple cheeks and smiles. She went up to Jago and held him by the arms. ‘What have you got for me today then, my lovely?’ she asked. ‘Have you brought me some crab?’

  Jago nodded. ‘And a box of mackerel. I put them round the back.’

  ‘You’re a good boy,’ said Gemma. ‘You know just what I like.’ And she reached up on tiptoes to kiss Jago’s cheek. ‘Goodness, you’re perishing – let me find something to warm you up.’

  She rushed off back to the kitchen and Jago looked over to us.

  ‘Hello, Spanner,’ he said.

  ‘Hello, Sadact,’ I said.

  Ellen said nothing. She was twisting a strand of hair round the finger of her free hand.

  ‘What are you doing here, Han?’ Jago went on. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’

  ‘We’ve finished.’

  ‘Not that you can call piddling around like you do working.’

  ‘Actually it was quite intensive.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Jago rubbed the end of his nose with a knuckle. ‘You should try doing a proper job for a change. You wouldn’t last five minutes.’

  ‘Messing about on boats? Playing with engines?’

  ‘Children, children!’ Gemma returned and pressed a warm paper bag into Jago’s hands. ‘Something for all of you,’ she said. ‘Bill and Darren too. It’ll put hairs on your chests.’

  Ellen giggled prettily, and looked down at her plate. I felt like slapping her.

  ‘Cheers, Gemma,’ Jago said. ‘Thanks.’

  The café was busy with the sound of the kettle boiling in the kitchen beyond and the radio and the murmur of conversation, forks on plates, cups chinking on saucers and the rain beating like little fists against the large windowpane.

  ‘I heard your mother’s not been too good,’ Jago said to Ellen.

  ‘No.’

  ‘She in the hospice?’

  ‘Not yet. But it’s going that way.’

  ‘It’s all right there,’ Jago said. ‘My ma liked it.’

  ‘She liked it?’

  ‘Really,’ Jago said. ‘She didn’t mind being there. They know what to do.’

  Ellen looked down at the table.

  ‘They’re good people,’ Jago said.

  ‘But isn’t it terribly depressing?’

  ‘No. At least, I don’t remember it like that.’

  ‘What do you remember?’

  ‘Laughter. Flowers. The curtains being open. And the dog …’

  ‘The dog?’

  ‘There was a therapy dog. Big friendly thing. I bloody loved that dog.’

  Ellen looked up again and she was smiling. Her eyes held Jago’s and I felt the connection between them and had to look away.

  This was something they could share, mothers in the hospice. I could not compete with that and I think I knew then, at that very moment, what was going to happen, the way I sometimes sensed what someone was going to say before they so much as opened their mouth.

  I was distracted, temporarily, by light shining through the café window, so bright I had to narrow my eyes. The clouds had blown past and for a moment the sun lit up the sea and the harbour, the boats rocking and rolling like potatoes boiling in a pan, a black dog sniffing at the stacked lobster pots on the jetty. Above the harbour, three gulls flew together in a perfect line. They turned and soared over the café. I shivered. I’d known all my life that three seagulls passing directly overhead was a portent.

  It didn’t mean anything to me at the time. Only much, much later, did I realize that the seagulls passed overhead the very moment Ellen took the first step on the path that led in a straight line to her death.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  AFTER THE ENCOUNTER with Charlotte and her friend in the pasty shop, I walked downhill to the little bakery that serviced the University of Bristol’s Drama Department and staff from the Bristol Royal Infirmary and the Children’s Hospital. I turned the conversation I had overheard around in my mind, looking at it every way I could and seeing no vindication for Charlotte’s actions or the things she had said. What right did she have to talk about John in that horrible, crude manner and to mock him so cruelly? It was obvious she only stayed with him because of his money. Was she really planning to carry on her affairs behind his back, making him a laughing stock? No doubt it suited her having a husband like John who was so honest he wouldn’t doubt his wife for a moment. I wondered how many men she had been with and how many people knew about her infidelities. Hundreds, probably.

  Also, Charlotte and her bad behaviour aside, I felt a conflict of emotions: guilt at my eavesdropping on something I wished I hadn’t heard, anger that John was being deceived, fear of the potential repercussions, and anxiety. I did not want John to be hurt. I couldn’t bear the thought of it.

  I didn’t know what I could do to make things better, or if I should do anything at all, but I felt I had to show solidarity in some way. At the baker’s, I bought two cheese salad baguettes and two cartons of coffee. I returned to the museum and knocked on John’s door, but he wasn’t in his office.

  ‘Try downstairs,’ said Rina.

  The museum’s main archive, where the thousands of exhibits that weren’t on permanent display were stored, covered an area the size of the building’s footprint directly beneath it. It was my least favourite place. Huge, long and low-ceilinged, it contained thousands of statues, busts, bones, pictures and other objects, crowded together on shelves haphazardly arranged to make the most of the available space. I had always especially disliked the death masks, dozens of plaster casts taken of eminent Victorian faces as the subjects lay cooling on their deathbeds. Some still had the occasional eyelash or smudge of powder embedded in the white clay.

  I unlocked the door to the archive and went down the steep steps, carved out of the rock beneath the museum. The place was brightly but harshly lit by naked lightbulbs.

  ‘John?’ I called, but there was no answer.

  I hurried past the masks, and the ranks of paintings, the framed ones encased in bubblewrap and blankets, the loose canvases rolled like scrolls, shelves full of bones, teeth, antlers, horns, hooves and tusks, ancient pottery shards and human paraphernalia of the last four millennia. If Ellen was waiting for me, if she was hiding somewhere, it would be here, am
ongst all the dead objects, all the human remains, those awful Victorian faces. I imagined her shadowing me, moving amongst the exhibits, flitting like a moth. It took all my willpower to keep going, and not to turn and run back up the steps, into the real world, the living world. At last I found John in the section of the archive loosely reserved for medieval human remains. He was wearing his white coat, a magnifying glass over one eye, and his earphones were plugged in. He was so engrossed in his work he had no idea I was there, behind him. I was breathless with relief.

  ‘John …’ I touched the sleeve of his coat gently so as not to alarm him. He turned and I recognized in his eyes the confusion that comes when a person is interrupted in the middle of a task that requires intense concentration.

  ‘I brought you some lunch,’ I said.

  He unplugged his iPod and smiled. ‘What did I do to deserve this?’

  ‘It was the least I could do to thank you for last night,’ I said, and I had to fight back an urge to lean forward and kiss his cheek.

  We left the museum and walked up to Brandon Hill Park, where we climbed to the top and sat together on a bench by the path beneath the Cabot Tower, enjoying the views over the River Avon and Bristol’s old docks. We ate our lunch and fed little pieces of bread to the squirrels. For a while we talked about work. Then John asked, ‘How are you feeling today, Hannah?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Migraine all gone?’

  ‘I haven’t seen any more ghosts, if that’s what you’re asking.’ I smiled to show I was not offended by his question, and brushed crumbs from my lap.

  ‘What if,’ John asked, ‘the person you saw yesterday wasn’t a figment of your migraine? There are seven billion people on the planet. When you think about it, it’s amazing we don’t see people who remind us of other people more often.’

  He was being kind. He was giving me a logical explanation for what had happened the previous day. That was the sort of man he was. Was this how he coped with Charlotte – making excuses for her, finding ways to explain and validate her behaviour? Did he act like this out of empathy, or because pretending was easier than facing the truth?

  I dug my nails into my hands and stared out over the docks. A memory flashed through my mind. Ellen’s hand flat against a glass door, pushing it open. The smell of stocks, a bowl of mints. Ellen, pale as a ghost, hollow-eyed, with the sleeves of her cardigan pulled down over her fingers and her arms wrapped about herself, saying, ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  I shook my head to be rid of it. I didn’t want to talk about Ellen, or think about her. I wanted to forget.

  ‘Are you doing anything special this weekend?’ I asked John.

  He folded his sandwich bag. ‘Actually, no. Charlotte’s taking the girls to see her mother. They’ve got tickets for some kids’ show.’ He smiled. ‘So for once I have the house to myself and nobody will mind if I spend the whole weekend reading and listening to music.’

  ‘That sounds good.’

  John sighed. ‘To be honest, I don’t much like it when they’re all away. I’m not very good at being on my own.’

  ‘Oh, John …’

  ‘Don’t look like that! It’s not that bad. They’ll be back Sunday evening. I’ll survive. What about you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘What are your plans for the weekend?’

  ‘Oh, I was thinking of going down to Cornwall. I haven’t seen my parents in a while and Rina said I should get away for a couple of days.’

  ‘She’s right. You deserve a break.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  I held my head up and brushed the hair out of my face, tucking it behind my left ear. My fingers stayed there, twisting the butterfly at the back of the silver stud. Part of me wanted to ask John if he’d like to come to Cornwall with me, just as a friend, just for the company, so that I could keep an eye on him and look after him, but I couldn’t. Not then. Not when I knew, and he did not, that his perfect life was built on such fragile and unreliable foundations.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  MRS BRECHT HAD been dying for ages. It felt like for ever, but that was back then, in the past, when a day’s boundaries stretched far further than they do now and a year was a length of time so immense as to be almost incomprehensible. I had known the Brechts for more than six years by the time Mrs Brecht became critically ill. I felt as if I had known them for the whole of my life.

  In the months leading up to her death, it was sometimes difficult for me to remember that Mrs Brecht was dying because I had no idea, up to that point, that the process could take so long. In films and books it always happened very quickly, a scene between diagnosis and funeral, an instant between the finger on the trigger and the bullet through the heart. Yet from the time Ellen told me her mother was so ill she sometimes wished for an end to the pain, until her actual death, two years elapsed. Mrs Brecht’s dying was slower than the seasons changing, slower than growing up.

  And as Mrs Brecht was dying, the garden at Thornfield House was coming back to life. Fruit trees and climbing flowers had been trained against the perimeter wall. A fountain trickled water prettily into the pond during the summer months; there were steps and paths winding amongst the flowerbeds and leading to different parts of the garden: areas for herbs and vegetables, a scented garden, a secret garden and one where all the flowers were yellow. It was full of life, all the time, all year round; in summer butterflies and bees busied themselves around the blooms and blossoms, in winter birds flocked to the feeders. As one group of flowers faded away, another came forward, so the garden changed slightly every day, but each day it seemed to become more beautiful. When Ellen and I returned from work, or from the beach, we sometimes found Mrs Brecht in the garden, leaning on Adam Tremlett’s arm, gazing out at what the two of them had created. When she was outside, enjoying the flowers, she seemed happier, as if the pain had receded. Indoors, it only became worse.

  Mr Brecht’s unhappiness and torment increased in direct proportion to the reduction in his wife’s health. I only saw him occasionally – he was often asleep during the day because he spent all night at Anne’s bedside, watching over her – but he seemed to grow more gaunt, less groomed, more handsome and tortured with every passing day. He paced through that big old house with a cigarette permanently between his fingers and his hair unkempt, trailing smoke and misery through the rooms. I felt as if my heart was breaking in tandem with his.

  On the days when Mrs Brecht was in the hospice, Ellen said it was better if I didn’t go into the house.

  ‘Papa can’t bear it when she’s not there,’ she said. ‘He has to drink to get through the day.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Ellen looked at me as if I were stupid. ‘Alcohol is an anaesthetic. It numbs the pain.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And he makes me play the piano, all the time, to remind him.’

  She picked at her nails and her face clouded over. I remembered how tenderly Mr Brecht had held onto Ellen the time I’d watched her playing piano through the window, and inside I gave a little sigh of sadness at the exquisite tragedy of the situation. This was a terrible time, I thought, and no wonder Mr Brecht was struggling to cope, but after Mrs Brecht was gone, I would step in to comfort him. He would be immersed in grief, no doubt, for a while, but one day the shadows would lift and, when they did, I would be there, waiting. He would see me and he would recognize my devotion and my inherent goodness, and he would reach out for me and hold me to him and whisper: ‘Oh Hannah, how could I live without you?’

  Mrs Brecht dying was like leaving school or going to university or having sex, something I knew would most likely occur at some point in the future, but which it was impossible to imagine in the present. Ellen was resigned to her mother’s death, though. She knew. During that long, slow time between the knowing and the dying, she hinted at it, always dropping the fact that the day of death was drawing nearer into the conversation as if to ensure nobody ever forgot that she was entangled
in the dramatic, climactic scenes of her mother’s life.

  She told me that her mother had called her to her side while her father was sleeping and told Ellen a secret. Ellen was not supposed to tell a single soul about it, but she told me. Her grandmother, Mrs Withiel, Anne Brecht’s mother, had been a very wealthy woman. And she had left everything to Ellen. Ellen would inherit her fortune on her eighteenth birthday. Mrs Brecht was trustee of the money and she had put all the arrangements in place. The rules were very strict: Ellen had to wait until she was eighteen, she couldn’t have a penny before then. When Ellen told me this she was wearing the wide-eyed, excited, conspiratorial expression she reserved for special stories, and I was not the slightest bit jealous because I was pretty sure she was making it up.

  ‘Your grandmother didn’t seem that rich when we saw her,’ I said.

  Ellen shrugged. ‘Mama says she was. Mama says she didn’t spend her money but hoarded it.’

  ‘Why would she leave it to you? She never even met you. Why didn’t she leave it to your mama?’

  ‘They fell out. They hadn’t spoken to one another in years.’

  ‘And what about your papa?’

  ‘He doesn’t know,’ Ellen said. ‘You mustn’t tell him! Promise me on your life you won’t tell him!’

  I promised. As if I would tell Mr Brecht a tall story like that anyway!

  As the time for Mrs Brecht’s dying came closer, Ellen became quieter and thinner and more unusual than ever. Our roles, oddly, became reversed. When a palliative nurse was employed to stay overnight at Thornfield House, the impending death became the single most important topic of conversation in Trethene and at school. Other girls whispered about Ellen as we dawdled in the grounds, and now I was the one who turned to glower at them.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ I would ask, pushing my face into theirs.

  ‘She don’t seem to care,’ was what the girls usually said. ‘If my mum was dying, I’d be crying all the time. But she just gets weirder.’

  We would all look over at Ellen, who would be, perhaps, sitting on a bench, holding her knees and staring up at the sky.